(Which has ultimately led to the behavior shown in this pic, by the way – this ties into a bit of what I got into here.)

I saw this item from Hillary Clinton, and I thought I needed to respond.

Yes, Hillary Clinton is right to say that the despicable actions of FBI Director James Comey contributed to her loss to Donald Trump (ugh) in the presidential election. But I think the following needs to be pointed out also.

I previously decried low-information voters who don’t pay attention to this stuff like they should, and I said they were partly to blame. I stand by that, with some caveats particular to Hillary Clinton that I’ll try to discuss, for what it’s worth. I also said that it’s pointless to engage in a circular firing squad on this stuff, but I’m going to break my own rule on that a bit.

With everything having settled in a bit, here is my number one reason why Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election:

She didn’t close the deal with the voters of this country on how she would manage the economy on their behalf.

The irony of this, to me, is utterly stupefying, because that is pretty much how her husband won election, particularly in 1992. And when it comes to voting psychology in this country, voters ALWAYS vote first and foremost on the economy.

Memorize this and burn it into your collective brains once and for all, Democrats – voters vote first and foremost based on the economy. Every time (I would put a bit of an asterisk on that next to 2004, though, since the Repugs beat 9/11 to death for political purposes and the economy hadn’t tanked yet).

The economy was teed up as THE political issue for Obama in 2008 since it was going all to hell, and the McCain/Palin team kept missing the proverbial boat on that issue over and over, particularly concerning the auto industry. So Obama almost couldn’t help but wrap his campaign around that. And in 2012, he had a record of success with the stimulus to run on (versus Willard Mitt Romney, who the Obama campaign had painted as a thoroughly out-of-touch elitist, which to me was an accurate portrayal). That year, Obama also had the power of incumbency on his side, and it’s hard to overestimate how important that is.

The Clinton team had none of these advantages. And they didn’t campaign as if they realized that. And that created the tiniest bit of an opening for that moron Gary Johnson and that nothing Jill Stein to jump in and claim that mantle instead (even Trump himself, laughably trying to act like he actually gives a damn about workers’ wages and that he actually knows something about creating jobs when he had experienced multiple business bankruptcies; of all of the corporate media stupidity during the campaign, the failure to point that out over and over was probably their biggest blunder).

Returning to the prior presidency of Bill Clinton (and why in God’s name didn’t Hillary remind voters of that era of economic success??), Hillary could have brought back the 1993 Bill Clinton budget that did a lot towards kick-starting a pretty solid era of job and wage growth. More than that, she could have reminded voters that it passed without a single Republican vote, and she could have tied that into a message about electing down-ballot Democrats to Congress!

(For the life of me, I will NEVER understand why Democrats seem to run away from their past record of success, but Hillary and her campaign did that. She did a really good job of portraying Donald Trump as the utterly narcissistic, intellectually lazy sexual predator that we all knew he was, but again, as her supporters, we knew that. She definitely didn’t appear to understand what it took to win over independents, who are the people that, for better or worse, decide our elections…something particularly galling given the fact that she probably had an army of people in her campaign who were supposed to know that in their sleep! Of course, the “Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party” knows better, I firmly believe – I’m sure that theory will be put to the test before too much longer.)

Or how about this – after defeating Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, she could have said “I’m Bernie Now,” and brought EVERYONE from the Sanders campaign on board and thrown out this band of DNC Beltway sycophants who seem to do absolutely NOTHING but lose elections! And she could have run her campaign accordingly (“go to the left,” as Kyle Kulinksi, among others, pointed out).

OK, enough of this exercise. We are where we are. Let’s take some down time for ourselves to try and regain our sanity and our strength. Because we’re going to need it.

Starting next January 21st, it’s probably going to be Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride every day. We just have to hang on for dear life and keep fighting in hope of a better future, eventually.

Update 11/13/16: I respect Joan Walsh a lot, and she’s right in a lot of what she has to say here about how our corporate media favored President Big Orange Cheetoh over HRC (and I suppose it’s just part of the cycle that the Dems have to try to make nice with this monstrosity who is now president – though I definitely would offer this in response).

However, I believe the Clinton team should have foreseen that they would get this kind of treatment from the news networks with initials for names. Was it fair? Of course not. But it was good for ratings, which is all they cared about, and EVER WILL care about.

But when faced with that, the Clinton team should have made THEIR OWN media. There were some very well done videos that they produced, but I couldn’t find anything approximating an “elevator pitch” on the economy. And yes, I looked.

There’s no shortage whatsoever of social media at our disposal – in addition to videos, there’s also Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter of course, other blogs sympathetic to the cause, etc. If you don’t like what the corporate media is doing, you make your own damn media! God knows the wingnuts don’t have any trouble propagating their garbage (always angers me that they have no problem getting out their lousy messages across scores of simpatico blogs and other sites and we have so much of a damn issue with getting out our good ones).

Besides, you generate enough of your own buzz, then the “news” networks WILL BE FORCED TO PAY ATTENTION TO YOU, if for no other reason that they’ll have potentially a ripe new audience for their advertisers.

Also, Walsh is sadly correct about those who purport to be on our side who demonized HRC regardless of what she did, and that was no help either of course (you reading this, Jimmy Dore?).

Update 11/14/16: I know I’m beating this to death and I swore I wouldn’t do that, and I apologize, but here is another observation from last Tuesday’s electoral hellscape, and it is this:

Hillary Clinton spent way, WAAAY too much time beating up on “Donald Drumpf.” The irony is that that fired up the Democratic base, but again, it did absolutely nothing for independents.

Yes, Trump deserved all of that invective and more. But here’s the thing: the person at the top of the ticket is supposed to leave it up to his or her surrogates to do that while the nominee for prez articulates the “vision thing,” as it was once called (I wish I has a nickel for every time I saw Bill Burton go at it with “Maniac Megyn” Kelly when Obama ran in ‘08, but that was his job).

Yes, our corporate media blocked out anything Clinton did on that time and time again. And yes, it was a scummy and lowdown thing to do. But you know what? That would have happened for ANY Democratic presidential nominee.

The media has been pulling this garbage for years. Back when we had Comcast Cable, I can recall an otherwise pretty solid news guy named Arthur Fennell who used to give us campaign updates on Bush and Kerry, and EVERY SINGLE TIME John Kerry gave a speech, Fennell would talk over what Kerry was saying to give his “spin” on what was going on and we never heard Kerry say a word. Now I think Fennell was just following orders, as it were, but it was still a dirty trick.

There are a bunch of solid presidential candidates I can recall who didn’t win because they were lousy campaigners. Is that fair? Of course not, especially considering the consequences. But I believe HRC thought the power of her personal narrative, as it were, would be good enough to win. It wasn’t.

Update 11/15/16: There aren’t too many people out there as far as I’m concerned who I would call studious observers of exactly what kind of electoral devastation took place a week ago, but I would say that Kurt Eichenwald is definitely one of those people, and I think he administers a dose of reality here (I had a feeling the Repugs had some “oppo” stuff on Sanders they would use if they had to, and believe me when I tell you that the stuff Eichenwald tells us is eye-opening…not saying it should have turned the election or how much of it is actually true, but to say it would have been a shot of hate-filled adrenaline to the wingnutosphere is a huge understatement).

By the time you read this, the sickening little demonstration noted here will be over (due to take place around midday today) – more follows…

The video opens with the black-and-white footage of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s stirring clarion call for equal rights at the 1963 March on Washington.

It quickly goes full color, and cuts to gruesome close-ups of the bloody remnants of abortions. It is fair to say that what is shown is disturbing.

On Friday, the images will be displayed on a 10- by 12-foot screen set high on Independence Mall, the heart of Philadelphia’s tourism zone, as the antiabortion group Created Equal brings its high-tech assault on the practice to Philadelphia.

The video, on a continuous loop, will be played from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to Mark Harrington, Created Equal’s national director.

“It seems fitting to me that we are launching this campaign in the very place where our nation’s founders penned those words, created equal,” Harrington said. “We are still battling for equal rights. In this case, it is the pre-born who are being discriminated against.”

I know there are individuals out there who profess to be “pro-life” and who indeed “walk the walk” as opposed to just “talking the talk,” and who have adopted babies, taken in single mothers in desperate situations, staged prayer vigils away from clinics and not interfered with the medically-related activity taking place (and of course not shouted epithets at anyone, thrown blood, tried to wreck cars, or any of that other stupidity, to say nothing of not writing ridiculous garbage in newspapers or calling into talk radio demonizing mothers seeking medical help). To me, those people deserve respect.

However, most of these individuals in my experience (such as it is) are cut from the same disgusting cloth as Mark Harrington (pictured). And I think it’s particularly vile for Harrington and his ilk to even imagine that his escapades have anything whatsoever to do with the struggle for civil rights in this country.

There is no good reason whatsoever for Harrington to engage in an activity like this (showing fetuses in the most grotesque situations imaginable, and probably some situations we can’t imagine), trying to force these images down the metaphorical throats of anyone visiting Independence Mall (including very young children, I’m sure), once of the more scenic places in the city (and the weather is nice today, so it should be busy), other than self-promotion.

And yes, I have a particular axe to grind here because I can still vividly remember the seemingly never-ending pictures of fetuses in jars in the Catholic Standard and Times newspaper after the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade in 1973, a time when I was still quite young and impressionable. As I’ve said, the images had an impact, but probably not the one the Church intended.

Harrington has pulled this stunt before, by the way, including Turlington Plaza at the University of Florida (generating this response, including the following)…

This has nothing to do with being pro-choice, pro-life or pro-anything. Regardless of anyone’s beliefs about abortion — and we all have an opinion there — does anyone feel it is acceptable to make students with abortion experiences feel uncomfortable on their own campus? No matter what the message, presentation is everything. In my opinion, a less-hostile open dialogue would be a more productive model of outreach. There must be another viable medium that doesn’t feel like an ambush. If I were considering abortion, or simply on the fence about my beliefs, these seemingly extremist people are not the ones I would consult.

Created Equal executive director Mark Harrington says his platform targets “the mushy middle,” people who have no strong stance at either end of the abortion debate spectrum.

I don’t believe such an audience exists on a university campus. If you do exist, on-the-fence folks, here’s my message to you: engage in civil, fact-based conversations with multiple people from both sides of the issue. Sharing beliefs and creating an open dialogue about social issues is a fundamental aspect of university life. One beauty of our campus is that it fosters constant exposure to new belief systems. No one here is naïve enough to want protection from opposing views. I imagine we all value them greatly. But this sideshow? It’s all a sensational stunt, an exhibition of the outlandish that serves only to needle young women into feeling guilty.

To the members of Created Equal, thank you for voicing your beliefs and exercising your right to free speech. However, is it too much to ask that women with abortion history or those considering it presently have a peaceful walk across their campus without being confronted by grisly photos of fetuses on coins? Is there not enough humanity in your movement to recognize the benefits of a different approach? Judging from the pamphlets that were available at the exhibit, I know you have other media at your disposal.

Regardless of my abortion views — which have probably become apparent anyway — it’s important to note these images are not from the typical procedure. Traveling pro-life groups are notorious for using photos of late-term abortions carried out for emergency reasons. Those interested should visit http://www.thisismyabortion.com/ for a glimpse of reality.

Uh, yep.

Next, I don’t want to spend too much time on the waste of protoplasm that is Erick (“Son of Erick”) Erickson, but he concocted the following nonsense here (in a column trying to equate ISIS with the cases of Ebola in this country)…

The Syrian rebels were too rag-tag and weak to take on ISIS, according to President Obama. But within a week of saying that, he announced to the world that his plan in Syria was to arm those rag-tag rebels and have them do our bidding against ISIS.

Um…regardless of what you may think of the strategy of arming Syrian rebels against ISIS (not a good option as far as I’m concerned, but preferable to U.S. “boots on the ground”), doesn’t what Erickson describe above seem like a logical course of events? Where is the “there” there?

It gets better…

The president also told the American public that Ebola would never come to the United States.

Sen. John McCain claimed on a Sunday talk show that “we were told there would never be a case of Ebola in the United States.” Not exactly. U.S. health officials, early in the outbreak, said it was highly unlikely, but we could not find any instances of them saying it would never happen.

This item from Fix Noise shill Jeanine Pirro doesn’t have anything to do with the Erickson column, but it does have something to do with ISIS, so allow me to add it here; namely, Pirro’s claim that Obama released Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, supposed head of this bunch of murderers, in 2009, which is categorically false. And as for Ebola, I guess what you would call of “clearing house” of debunked Ebola-related BS is here. And in conclusion on ISIS, I think this is definitely food for thought also.

Further (and sticking with Number 44), it looks like “liberal” Richard Cohen is at it again (here)…

Tell me something: What do you think would happen if the United States concludes that Iran has been cheating and delaying and is about to pop a fully functional nuclear weapons program? Would President Obama respond by joining Israel to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities to smithereens, or would he stall and equivocate? My bet is the latter and also, just to double down, what I bet the Iranians are betting. They have taken the measure of Obama. He lacks menace.

Menace is essential in a world leader if he (or she) is going to be feared as well as admired. Obama falls into the admired category — the leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize with mere good intentions, a guy who had a new attitude toward Russia (a reset) and Iran (an approach) and China (a pivot) and, of course, to the Muslim world — an appreciation from a president who had broken the mold. We know him now as someone miscast: a rational man in an irrational world.

I must tell you that I read over this a few times and thought “do I really want to say something about this idiot” (Cohen, I mean)? Isn’t life already too short?

And then I thought to myself, sure, why not?

For one thing, comments like this betray more of Cohen’s mindset than that of the world he supposedly knows something about. Because he apparently craves the “certainty” of a leader who, though perhaps catastrophically wrong, would act as if his thought processes are populated by fevered dreams of something called American Exceptionalism (I know you know who I’m talking about). And if this leader takes us into yet another catastrophic misadventure in the Middle East for no good reason…well, that means that Israel won’t be fighting alone now, will it?

Call me just a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, but maybe the reason we have an irrational world (I agree with Cohen on that much) is because we have too many irrational people in charge! And wouldn’t it be nice if we did a better job of recognizing people who actually have their scruples and act like intelligent adults in the face of onslaughts from all over the world (not saying to never question them, but just to try and support them when we believe it is necessary)?

Given that, then surely Cohen would have noted long ago that Obama is “a rational man in an irrational world” and tried to make sure that his criticisms had at least some basis in reality, right?

Well…

Here, he condemned the White House visit by the parents of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier held captive in Afghanistan for five years, as “utterly repellent,” even though Cohen acknowledged that the circumstances surrounding Bergdahl’s capture are unclear.

Here, he embraced the “leading from behind” smear of President Obama (straight out of Drudge, Breitbart, and the like).

Here (as he does in his most current column), he makes a misguided push for a strike on Iran.

Here, he wrote that Europe’s supposed view of Obama is that he’s an “accidental” president, among other nonsense.

(By the way, lots of other Cohen-related idiocy can be read from here.)

Yes, I realize this is part of the whole pundit game about finding ways to be talked about. However, I honestly believe that Cohen thinks he’s right that our president should act in the manner and style deployed here (and no, I haven’t forgotten what led up to that). All to display “menace,” no doubt.

How pitiably sad for Cohen not to realize that, were Obama to do such a thing, the rest of the world would surely laugh in his face.

Continuing (and speaking of pitiably sad), I give you former Ken Blackwell here on the matter of “biosimilar” drugs (more here…and this gives us a refresher on why Blackwell is such a miscreant – hard to believe that it’s been nearly 10 years)…

Now, it is up to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to implement the biosimilar approval process. But millions of dollars have been spent on a lobbying effort from Obama’s crony capitalist friends on K Street to protect the interests of biologic drug markers. Initially, they were given a 12-year data exclusivity clause in the Obamacare law. But now, they are fighting through a questionable grassroots campaign, with the goal of distracting the FDA.

These special interests are demanding unnecessary distinct naming rules for the ingredients in generic drugs, even though Obamacare does not allow for it. Americans with life- threatening diseases do not deserve to suffer thanks to these complicated and underhanded tricks by those in the pockets of Big Pharma.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

I hate to break the news to Blackwell, but both parties are in the hands of “Big Pharma,” as noted here.

More to the point, this tells us that the 12-to-14-year window Blackwell criticizes “drew applause from CVS Caremark, whose EVP specialty pharmacy services, Dave Golding, participated in an FTC roundtable event on the issue” (the Generic Pharmaceutical Association agreed with Number 44 on this also).

Not surprisingly, though, naming conventions for generics provoked this letter from 28 members of Congress who opposed the move; I believe the FDA recommendation on that was voluntary, by the way – hard to sift through some of the bureaucratic-ese (and the 28 who signed the letter are the same motley crew of usual conservative suspects, by the way). However, for anyone criticizing naming conventions for generics (which would bring them to parity with name brands, by the way) I have two words; Accutane and Sulindac (read from this link about the misery suffered by those who took these poisons).

“Regulation of these formularies is going to be a huge thing moving forward,” said Paul A. Calvo, a director in the biotechnology group at Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox. “I think as soon as the public heard there is very limited oversight in these areas, they went nuts.”

Understandable as far as I’m concerned; background on formularies (basically, lists of prescribed medications for particular illnesses for insurance purposes) can be accessed from here.

Oh, and speaking of “nuts” (and having to do with bioresearch a bit), I give you this.

Bristol, PA – Last week, Fitzpatrick for Congress released its first ad of the general election. Unfortunately, the ad misleads voters about Fitzpatrick’s failed record on veterans’ issues. The facts show that Congressman Fitzpatrick has stood in the way of reducing the veterans disability claims backlog, and has voted against veterans’ interests on multiple occasions.

The ad shows a doctor walking alongside a disabled veteran in a wheelchair. The exact footage used in the ad is available for purchase on http://www.istockphoto.com as “Man in wheelchair walking with doctor – Stock Video.”

Strouse campaign spokesman Will Block commented, “This year, we saw Congressman Fitzpatrick jump onto a bandwagon with his colleagues to put a bandaid on a problem that he helped create in the first place. Disabled veterans are real heroes with real stories who deserve a Congressman that will fight for the care that they deserve — not some stock footage that can be purchased online. The fact that Fitzpatrick suddenly cares about the disability backlog, especially when he’s running against a combat veteran, is exactly what’s wrong with politics.”

Fitzpatrick’s ad claims that he worked with a whistleblower this year to uncover the claims backlog at the Philadelphia Veterans Benefits Administration office. Well, the backlog is nothing new, and the Congressman knows it. In fact, in 2013 he voted against a motion which would have provided funding to hire more adjudicators to cut through the disability claims backlog.

Block continued, “Fitzpatrick’s anti-veteran record speaks for itself. It’s especially egregious for Fitzpatrick to claim to be working to end the disability claims backlog after voting in 2013 against a measure to do exactly that. These issues at the VA are nothing new — unfortunately, they only seem to matter to Congressman Fitzpatrick in an election year.”

In 2013, Fitzpatrick voted against a motion to recommit with instructions that would help reduce the backlog of disability claims for veterans. The amendment would add $9.2 million in funding (double the funds in the underlying appropriations bill) to hire an additional 94 claims processors to help reduce the veterans disability claims backlog. The amendment failed 198-227. [MTR on H.R. 2216, Vote #192, 6/04/13]

Fitzpatrick voted to block the “Veterans Backlog Reduction Act”, which would
direct the secretary to pay provisional benefits for claims that are still processing: [New York Times, 5/30/14; Vote #180, 5/23/13]

“From The New York Times: Republican House candidates could also find themselves under pressure to explain their past votes against proposals for more money for veterans programs. Democrats were pointing to a procedural vote in May 2013, when House Republicans opposed a Democratic measure called the Veterans Backlog Reduction Act.”

###

Kevin Strouse is a former Army Ranger, CIA counterterrorism analyst, and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who lives in Middletown, Pa., with his wife, Amy, and two young children, Walter and Charlotte. He is currently Program Director of Teach2Serve, a non-profit that teaches social entrepreneurship to regional high school students. He earned his BA from Columbia University and a Masters in Security Studies from Georgetown University, graduating with honors.

To help with the Kevin Strouse campaign in the closing days, please click here.

This graphic appeared in last Sunday’s edition of the Bucks County Courier Times accompanying a typically ridiculous letter on their ultra-wingnutty Op-Ed page accusing President Obama of instituting a “KGB” of sorts in this country; to the extent that I could determine anything logical in the letter, it also mentioned BENGHAZI!!!, the IRS “scandal,” Hillary Clinton, and all the other “dog-whistle” conservative nonsense.

At first glance, it looks like Obama is depicted as a Nazi, wearing a typical “brown shirt.” However, if you look closer, I suppose you can detect the Obama logo emblazoned where a hammer and sickle might otherwise appear.

And if that paper ever depicts a Republican politician in that manner, I’ll send them a check for $20.

And I sincerely believe that I will NEVER, EVER have to make good on that wager (at least it looks like Ben Carson is on board based on this – heh).

Next, it looks like, following in the wake of Bernard Goldberg and probably a few other high-profile journos of dubious ability, Sharyl Attkisson is going to bolt from “The Tiffany Network,” with the ever-worn claim of “liberal bias” as an alleged excuse here.

Gee, you don’t think it could have anything to do with her book that is about to come out echoing a similar theme, could it? Naaah.

With that in mind, let’s review the following:

Attkisson received an award from a “birther” organization at the CPAC freak show two years ago (here – other CBS alums cried foul, for the record…she probably should have quit right then and there).

She was also behind an error-ridden report on the “new Solyndras” in January 2012 (here).

She was behind another dubious report here, this time on the Affordable Care Law.

Here, she allowed Gramps McCain to say that the stimulus wasn’t, in fact, a stimulus package, but a spending package; I realize that that’s just a right-wing talking point that has nothing to do with reality, since you have to spend in a wise, targeted manner to invest in a way that makes a difference, a feat that is apparently impossible for any Republican politician on the national level.

I guess all of this is just positioning for a gig at Fix Noise; if so, she’d better have a bottle of Peroxide handy, as well as an ample supply of tight skirts allowing her to show off plenty of leg (that’s how Roger Ailes prefers his “anchor blondes,” after all).

Update 4/11/14: Yep, she must be vying for a prime-time gig with this (watch out, Hannity!).

In addition, this tells us that it is possible that Wisconsin (under Repug governor Scott Walker) is anticipated to have a $1 billion surplus by June 2015 (I read about this at The Weakly Standard…fair is fair).

Of course, you don’t also hear that the surplus is built on a structural deficit and the state is 28th in job creation nationwide (that and more can be read from here).

This made me contemplate the potential electoral fortunes of PA’s own Repug governor, and that would be none other than Tom “Space Cadet” Corbett.

As noted from here, Corbett’s radio ad claims that he’s “saved us over a billion in taxes, reduced the size of state government to its lowest in 50 years, eliminated $43 million in state cars and created 150,000 new private sector jobs.”

That is a highly deceptive claim. As Factcheck points out…

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pennsylvania has added a net 138,300 private sector jobs between January 2011, when Corbett took office, and December 2013, the latest figures available. The December figures are projected, and Corbett’s office said it looked at the numbers from January 2011 to November 2013, which show a net gain of 151,100 private sector jobs.

Corbett’s comments focus on private sector job growth. During his time in office, the number of government jobs has declined by a net 42,000 (most from local government jobs). When looking at all jobs, including government jobs, Pennsylvania has gained 96,300 total jobs under Corbett – a 1.7 percent job growth over three years, ranking the state 46th in total job growth among the states.

And as far as Corbett’s scheme to make the poor work or else they won’t qualify for Medicaid expansion, he appears to have backtracked on that a bit (probably because even Corbett sees his awful poll numbers), but it all appears to be in a review period based on this Kaiser article (of course – with said “review period” timed so it would have less of an impact on the gubernatorial election).

If you want to put an end to this nonsense (and why wouldn’t you?), then click here to support Tom Wolf or click here to support Allyson Schwartz, two Democratic candidates for governor, either of who would be better than the incumbent (more is here).

Further (and turning to The Daily Tucker), I give you the following from here…

An American citizen has been unjustly imprisoned by the communist government of Cuba for over four years. He has lost over 100 lbs, according to his wife, and has pleaded for the U.S. government to come to his aid. He suffers depression as his days consist of being locked in a small cell with two other inmates in a military prison.

His crime? Alan Gross dared to hand out satellite phones to Cubans whose government prevents them from having significant contact with the outside world. The Obama administration’s failure to secure Gross’s release is unacceptable. The American people should demand the State Department take immediate action to bring this man home.

…

Despite attempts by legislators and other U.S. representatives to secure Gross’s release, and appeals to outside forces such as the Vatican, the president has not commissioned an official envoy to Cuba.

I’m not giving Obama a total pass here, but I would say that the biggest reason for the lack of a Cuba envoy is the fact that our politicians (primarily Obama’s “loyal opposition”) refuse to settle the matter of either trying or releasing the Guantanamo Bay inmates and giving the whole damn thing back to Cuba.

Or, as former U.S. envoy to Cuba Michael Parmly (from ’05-’08) said here…

The U.S. base is a “historic anomaly” even though the two countries have not had diplomatic relations since 1961, Parmly wrote.

“The current partisan tensions on the (Capitol) Hill ensure that it would be an uphill climb, but it is the thesis of this paper that a similar bold step, akin to the Panama Canal, is called for regarding Guantanamo,” he said, citing that 1977 U.S. return of the waterway to Panama as a precedent.

Parmly suggests that, even with the return of Guantanamo to Cuba, the U.S. could still run a jail there, or something. I don’t know how that would be possible, but I think Parmly is on the right track.

Besides, the Repugs generally go crazy whenever Number 44 (or anyone else who isn’t them, apparently) engages with Cuba in any way. This tells us about their reaction to Obama’s handshake with Cuban President Raul Castro, and this tells us about the outcry over a Beyonce/Jay Z trip to the island.

So yeah, here’s a wild, crazy thought – try actually working with Number 44 and the envoy appointed last year, Clifford Sloan (here), to try and shut down Guantanamo first. How can we have an envoy to Cuba who isn’t a total figurehead as long as it stays open?

Matthew Morgan was crumpled on the pavement lying in a pool of blood. Bones had torn through his flesh. His left foot was nearly severed. As he lapsed into and out of consciousness, a jarring thought crossed the Baptist preacher’s mind: he no longer had health insurance.

“That was one of the first thoughts I had after I got hit,” Matthew told me in a telephone interview from his home in Indianola, Miss.

Matthew is a bi-vocational pastor. He ministers to two congregations and works a full-time job at the Indianola Pecan House. The 27-year-old is married and has four children. His oldest is five, the youngest is one. And on Feb. 17th he became a victim of ObamaCare.

If nothing else, this proves that no commentary is too vile for the media wing of the Republican Party (giving these cretins the benefits of the doubt for now when it comes to the facts, but if more is found out, including anything different, I’ll definitely update this post).

As the story tells us, Morgan and his family live in Mississippi. And according to the story…

The Morgans tried to sign up for ObamaCare on the Healthcare.gov website, but Matthew said that was a fruitless effort.

“We couldn’t get on the website,” he said. “That was one of our issues as we shopped around.

For that, Morgan should blame Repug Governor Phil Bryant, not President Obama. Because, as noted here…

Under the Affordable Care Act, every state has until the end of this year to set up an insurance exchange where legal residents can shop for health coverage. The goal is to help consumers shop for value while forcing insurers to compete in an open marketplace. To make coverage more affordable, the act requires everyone to join the risk pool―and it subsidizes coverage for those who can’t pay full fare. To give states the greatest possible flexibility, the law offers gives them three ways to develop their exchanges. A state can (1) set up an independent exchange that meets national standards, (2) develop an exchange in partnership with the federal government, or (3) stand aside and let the feds handle the job.

For all their resistance to Obamacare, Mississippi politicians have long favored the first option.With the support of former Gov. Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s Republican insurance commissioner, Mike Chaney, started developing an exchange called “One, Mississippi” before Congress even passed the Affordable Care Act. Since the act took effect three years ago, Chaney has won a federal grant to complete the plan and has even started promoting “One, Mississippi” online as “an easy-to-use, easy-to-understand marketplace for comprehensive medical insurance, where individuals and small businesses can comparison shop for health benefits.”

But unlike his predecessor, (Bryant) has worked to kill “One, Mississippi” in the cradle. To meet federal standards, state insurance exchanges must link consumers not only to private insurance plans but also to safety net programs―Medicaid for the poor and federally discounted private policies for people earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level. Medicaid falls under the governor’s jurisdiction, so Bryant simply refused to link the program to the “One Mississippi” exchange. Besides cutting the neediest people out of the exchange, his ploy flouted national law, forcing federal officials to reject the whole proposal. “With a lack of support from your Governor and no formal commitment to coordinate from other State agencies,” HHS wrote in in a letter to the insurance commissioner last week, “we do not see a feasible pathway to conditionally approving a State-based Exchange in Mississippi for 2014.”

Oh, and Starnes ends his column with the following (conflating Morgan with the foul, lying Koch Brothers – nice touch)…

Matthew Morgan is a victim of ObamaCare – one of many. But Democrats would like you to believe that people like Matthew are liars. Those are Harry Reid’s words.

I’d rather put my trust in a Baptist preacher than a leader of political party that booed God.

Finally (and sticking with health care), this tells us that the U.S. House Repugs finally did something that once seemed unattainable, and that was to vote for the 50th time to repeal the Affordable Care Law.

And that means that I’m now behind on my count of the 50 U.S. House Repugs I intend to profile in response, so here are the following updates:

# 48 – Mike Pompeo (KS – 04)

Actually, after reading more about Pompeo, I realized that I should have profiled him MUCH earlier than now, but better late than never…

And as noted here, that’s not surprising in the least, considering that he made his fortune off a Koch-backed company.

His only public policy experience is with a Koch-related outfit (same Think Progress link as above).

Also the Kochs were by far the biggest contributors to his 2010 U.S. House campaign (same Think Progress link as above).

Pompeo also hired an ex-Koch Bros. lobbyist as his chief of staff (here).

Oh, and he made the news recently when he wanted Edward Snowden off the bill at the South-by-Southwest conference here (ummm, SXSW is in Texas, and Pompeo allegedly represents a congressional district in Kansas…???).

#49 – Kerry Bentivolio (MI – 11)

This guy is truly unique, I must admit, ending up in the House seat formerly held by “Mad Thad” McCotter until McCotter ran into that little problem with the petition signatures in his run for governor (here – Bentivolio is a veteran, though; I’ll give him that much).

Tim Bos, who was Bentivolio’s Re-Election Field Director, basically took the occasion of the retirement of House Dem John Dingell (the longest-serving member of Congress) to engage in some typical partisan BS here (with Bentivolio trying to pretend that Bos only holds a minor position, or something – please).

Bentivolio didn’t hold a single town hall during the August congressional recess last year (noted here…I remember how the wingnuts in these parts went crazy when former rep Patrick Murphy held “tele”-town halls, also employed since by Mikey the Beloved, without a face-to-face presence…I guess rules are for little people, and Democrats of course).

He also wants to take funds that should be spent on road repair in Michigan and give them to Republican legislators here (nice).

His own brother said Bentivolio was “mentally unbalanced” here (too funny).

And just for background info purposes, this tells us that Bentivolio is a former Santa Claus and reindeer farmer (ho ho ho).

#50 – Mike Kelly (PA – 03)

And to round out the list, I thought I would return to PA…

Kelly was all about cutting spending until it came to cutting $4 billion in subsidies for the top five oil companies (here) – and did I mention that Kelly’s money comes from car dealerships, and he married a natural gas heiress? (typical)

He said here that people would still get their Medicare/Medicaid access and Social Security checks in the event of a government shutdown (uh, no).

He also said Obama was a “black president who divides us on race” here (good one).

He compared the so-called birth control “mandate” in the Affordable Care Law to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 here (too precious).

As noted here, Kelly played the supposed IRS “scandal” for all he thinks it’s worth at a hearing while questioning IRS commissioner Steven Miller (and as I and others have pointed out many, many times, the only politically-oriented group that actually lost its preferred status was a progressive one in California).

This tells us that, with the election of David Jolly to a U.S. House seat over Democrat Alex Sink in Florida, the Repugs believe that they’re well-positioned for this fall’s congressional battles, in which they seek to hold onto their leadership in the U.S. House and perhaps (perish the thought) take over the U.S. Senate (even though Jolly won a solidly Republican district).

I don’t see how we’ll be able to outraise them (love to be wrong), and the 2010 redistricting in their favor continues to pay dividends. So that leaves campaigning on the issues, foremost of which is the Affordable Care Law.

And the fact that these idiots have voted 50 times to repeal a law that, to date, has allowed about 4.2 million people to sign up for health insurance with solid coverage for manageable premiums, as noted here (aside from the other idiotic Capitol Hill Republican obstruction taking place) should be the biggest issue of all.

Nope, our dear cousins at the news networks with initials for names (not counting the media wing of the Republican Party, of course) will ALWAYS “ride the tire swing” on behalf of you-know-who, as noted below (“EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JOHN McCAIN!!! WHAT PEARLS OF WISDOM WILL HE EMPART NEXT???).

At this point in his career in public life, the senior Republican U.S. senator from Arizona is nothing but a pitiable shill for the warmongers and the “one percent” (seeing as how we live in the era of angry millionaires). And he will be forever bitter that a Democrat resides in An Oval Office as a result of the 2008 election instead of he and Caribou Barbie (perish the thought).

And regardless of what he ever says, he will NEVER be called out by the Beltway political-media-industrial complex for it.

Next, it’s time for a trip through the looking glass again, as noted here…

(Last month), Oregon’s Ellen Rosenblum became the latest AG to abdicate her duty to defend (a state ban on gay marriage). And earlier (in February), a federal judge struck down Virginia’s traditional definition of marriage after Attorney General Mark Herring refused to defend it.

Herring’s defense of his abdication was typical of these attorneys general. He said he was putting Virginia “on the right side of history.” But the job of an attorney general is law not history, and Herring and the other AGs have failed at that job.

Herring put himself on the wrong side of the Virginia constitution, which bans same-sex marriage, the wrong side of recent Supreme Court rulings and most importantly, on the wrong side of his sworn duty to defend Virginia’s laws.

While he was at it, Herring also violated his ethical obligation to zealously represent his clients — the people of Virginia — who enacted the gay marriage ban through a 2006 ballot initiative.

And by the way, you can include PA’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane on the list of attorneys general choosing not to defend the indefensible (IMHO) DOMA for their state/commonwealth.

The author of this piece is Curt Levey, and I believe he has a rather interesting interpretation of what laws the Supreme Court should defend and which ones they shouldn’t (don’t worry – I’m being sarcastic). For, as noted here, The Supremes have already ruled against the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which predicates the actions of attorneys general like Herring and Kane. Also, Levey tried to argue that the High Court should overturn the Affordable Care Law, and, in the process, ignored the fact that it has to do with interstate commerce (the Court of Hangin’ Judge JR has observed throughout that such a law is covered under the so-called “commerce clause” of the Constitution – if nothing else, this shows that Levey doesn’t truly have the understanding of the law that he claims to have…here).

As noted here from about four years ago, though, there really is no need to give Curt Levey the time of day at a reputable news site anyway.

Further, Repug U.S. Senator Rand “Fake Ophthalmologist” Paul of Kentucky, in pursuit of another way to try and burnish his wingnut bona fides, is opposing Dr. Vivek Murthy’s nomination as the next Surgeon General (here)…

Citing his work in political advocacy pushing for gun control and Obamacare, (Paul) threatened…to place a hold on President Obama’s Surgeon General Nominee.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Paul explained his objection to Dr. Vivek Murthy, Obama’s choice for the position.

…

According to Paul, Murthy’s “primary policy goals” have been pushing stricter gun control laws and Obamacare, and that Murthy refers to “guns as a public health issue on par with heart disease and has diminished the role of mental health in gun violence.”

I’m not going to deal with Paul’s typically idiotic claim that Dr. Murthy “diminished the role of mental health in gun violence.” Instead, I’ll ask the following question; I wonder if Paul knows that Dr. C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General under The Sainted Ronnie R, thought gun violence was a public health issue also (here)?

And in defense of Dr. Murthy, I give you the following (here, from Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association)…

We know that Dr. Murthy values prevention. As a member of the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health, he is already working to give sound advice that brings together every facet of government — from education and defense to housing and transportation — to ensure health is considered across the full spectrum of national programs and policies.

He has demonstrated that he is a mature leader of men and women. As co-founder and president of Doctors for America, he brought together 16,000 physicians and medical students to advocate for quality, affordable health care for all. He has also been a leader in HIV prevention and education as president of Visions Worldwide. And finally, we know that Dr. Murthy has the bright mind to take the latest science and turn it into better health outcomes. He is well trained and as an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he’s successfully practiced at some of our nation’s most prestigious health care institutions.

Dr. Murthy has accomplished much in his 37 years. Because of his young age, however, some might question his readiness for such an important position. However, our nation has been privileged to have had many such successful young health innovators over the years. For example, Dr. Vivien Thomas helped devise the procedure to correct the “blue baby syndrome”; Dr. Robert Jarvik invented one of the first artificial hearts; Dr. Joseph Murray performed the first human kidney transplant; and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi was one of the key discovers of HIV as the virus that causes AIDS.

These groundbreaking health advancements, which have saved millions of lives, were made possible by four leaders younger than Dr. Murthy. Competence, not age, should be the major criteria for this important position.

Oh, and by the way, can we please dispense with this fiction that “Dr.” Paul is actually a certified ophthalmologist by a reputable board, OK (here)?

Continuing, did you know that “liberals are destroying the planet,” according to Ed Rogers? Why, he says so here, in a column where he posits that there should be a category of individuals who believe or, more precisely, don’t believe in climate change called the “Prudent Rationals” (yep, it gets pretty thick here quickly, if you know what I mean)…

“The Prudent Rationals” would be comprised of those whose attitudes comport with something like the following: They are generally respectful of the scientific community and are eager to listen to mainstream scientists and researchers. They want to hear from legitimate experts who acknowledge the variables, the uncertainties and, importantly, the mistakes and errors of climate science so far. This group could support a prudent plan to produce measurable benefits, but only if the plan were truly global in scope and the cost seemed to be proportional to the outcome. The “Prudent Rationals” believe it is reasonable to accept that there are consequences for continually pumping gases into the atmosphere. And it seems right that one generation should leave the planet better than they found it for the next generation. But we need to be realistic about technical science and political science. If we can’t act globally to limit these gases, we should be focusing on local pollution, not on plans that unilaterally wreck our economy and impoverish millions – if not billions – for nothing.

Laurence Lewis of Daily Kos answered all of this idiocy pretty well here, I thought (and for something that is supposed to be nothing more than some dastardly liberal plot, it should be noted that the CIA and the National Academy of the Sciences are going to spend about $630,000 to “study how humans might influence weather patterns, assess the potential dangers of messing with the climate, and investigate possible national security implications of geoengineering attempts” – here, so clearly, the “spooks” believe in the climate crisis, wouldn’t you say?).

After reading the WaPo column, though (and managing to keep down my lunch in the process), I got a little curious about Ed Rogers, so I decided to do a bit of investigating. And it turns out that, along with former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, he runs the uber-lobbying firm BGR (here). For more information, this tells us more about the lobbying activities of BGR (no big “get” here I know, but I still think it’s interesting to see how wide their footprint is, as it were).

It should also be noted that Rogers is an old hand when it comes to taking shots at Democrats, trying to impugn then-Senator Barack Obama in his run for the White House in 2006 (here). And after peaking in revenue in ’07, the firm apparently saw a 25 percent drop up to ’10, blaming Obama for it of course, as noted here; however, I’m sure the item below didn’t help with the firm’s revenues either (here)…

This time around though, (Barbour, the “B” in BGR) is starting his new political and personal business projects at a sensitive moment. The former governor is also trying to put out a political firestorm in Mississippi that was sparked by 215 pardons — including 17 to convicted murders — he issued in his last days in office earlier this month.

The new GOP governor, Phil Bryant, has indicated he would back a constitutional amendment to limit the pardoning powers of the governor; and the state’s Democratic attorney general, Jim Hood, called Barbour’s sweeping pardons “an absolute tragedy for the victims involved in each of these cases.”

The high-decibel attacks on Barbour in the Magnolia state have sent shock waves up and down K Street where Ed Rogers, one of his partners at BGR, last week scrambled to contain the fallout.

According to sources, Rogers urged Barbour to move quickly to tamp down the controversy by giving his own full account of what he did and why he did it, lest it hurt Barbour’s effectiveness and image — and perhaps the firm’s lucrative bottom line.

But not to worry – I’m sure Rogers will end up just fine; he apparently “landed on his feet” in the manner noted below (here)…

TRENTON — A Washington lobbyist whose firm represents the Florida company that won the lion’s share of New Jersey’s debris removal work after Hurricane Sandy will host a fundraiser for Gov. Chris Christie’s re-election later this month.

The event will take place at the Virginia mansion of Ed Rogers, chairman of BGR Group, which lobbies members of Congress on behalf of AshBritt Inc. — a firm that has come under scrutiny because of a lucrative no-bid emergency contract it was awarded in the days after the hurricane.

The lobbying company was co-founded by Republican Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor who helped shepherd Christie’s career and was one of the people who recommended the state use AshBritt.

None of what I have cited here is illegal on the part of Rogers and his firm as far as I know. But I wouldn’t complain that anybody is “destroying the planet” if their own activities don’t exactly pass the smell test either.

Finally, I haven’t checked up our wet noodle PA-08 U.S. House Rep for a little while, so I need to bring everyone up to date a bit on Mikey the Beloved’s recent adventures (here, with a heaping helping of whining about supposedly “job-crushing” regulations, or something – I was tipped off to this when I received Mikey’s Email newsletter)…

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-8) delivered letters and copies of the film “Barrel of a Gun” to Senate offices in the nation’s capital Friday in an effort to educate Senators regarding the circumstances and events surrounding the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner by Mumia Abu Jamal. The president’s nominee to head the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Debo Adegbile, led efforts to recruit attorneys to pervert the justice system after Jamal’s just conviction for his heinous crime.
…

Fitzpatrick has ardently opposed the nomination of Adgebile (sic) since its announcement in early January, writing to the president and members of the Senate Judiciary committee and calling the recommendation ‘confounding.’ Prior to the Senate Judiciary’s 10-8 party-line approval of Adegbile’s nomination, Fitzpatrick spoke with Senators and urged them to consider the Adegbile’s involvement with the celebritization of Mumia through his legal representation.

Even by Mikey’s low standards, this is pretty repulsive stuff (and nice typo, by the way). As noted here…

On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the 75 undersigned organizations, we are writing to indicate our strongest possible support for the nomination of Debo P. Adegbile to be Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. Mr. Adegbile is a tireless advocate, a skilled litigator, and a well-respected member of the legal community who is extraordinarily qualified for and suited to this position.

Mr. Adegbile is one of the preeminent civil rights litigators of his generation. He is also a consensus builder. Mr. Adegbile has earned respect and admiration from a bipartisan set of colleagues, lawyers, and leaders, including former Solicitors General Paul Clement and Drew Days, because of his principled and measured approach to issues.

Throughout his career, Mr. Adegbile has distinguished himself as a highly effective and respected advocate who achieved successes both inside and outside the courtroom. The son of immigrants who worked his way from poverty to the top of the legal profession, Mr. Adegbile is a steadfast voice for equality and opportunity for all Americans. [Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, 1/7/14]

Also, while I will never defend Mumia Abu-Jamal, I think it’s also pretty safe to say that he’s still entitled to a legal defense, and I don’t see how representing Abu-Jamal constitutes a “celebritization (word?) of Mumia through his representation” Besides, as the Media Matters post tells us…

When he was a partner at Hogan Lovells, the letter (cited above) noted, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. helped represent Florida death row inmate John Ferguson, convicted in the murder of eight people.

On top of all of this, I thought this was a well-done editorial by the Inky (shocking, I know) about Debo Adegbile, in which the paper accused anyone trying to connect him with Abu-Jamal of “blatant demagoguery” which was quite rightly called “sickening” (Mikey wasn’t mentioned, but Sen. Pat “No Corporate Tax” Toomey was).

In his newsletter, Fitzpatrick also tells us that about 11 million small business employees will see their premiums increase as a result of the Affordable Care Law. Of course, Fitzpatrick doesn’t tell us that 6 million small business employees will see their premiums drop (as noted here – also, we don’t know what kind of a percentage both of those numbers represent against everyone projected to enroll on the exchanges across the country).

And in conclusion, Mikey tells us with his typical whining petulance that “Congress makes the laws” here (I don’t know who this Dr. Larry Kawa is, and I don’t care – witness Mikey’s laser-like focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs”) and President Obama has no right to delay implementing the employer mandate in supposed unilateral executive fashion (sarcasm mode off).

The strategy shifted again last month after the Obama administration announced a one-year delay of the law’s employer mandate. Boehner seized on the move to argue that the White House was giving a break to businesses but not to individuals by delaying only one of the two major mandates. He and Cantor quickly scheduled votes to delay both the employer and individual mandates, and they cheered when more than 20 Democrats voted for each bill.

So, while Fitzpatrick has called for a delay in implementing the individual mandate (which I ALSO don’t agree with, as noted here), he is having a typical hissy fit by accusing President Obama of trying to make his own law, or something, when in reality, Mikey’s own House congressional “leadership” had scheduled a vote to delay the employer mandate MONTHS AGO!

With all of this is mind, I would ask that you click here to respond (and I would like to point out the following to the Kevin Strouse campaign – if you expect to have any hope of pulling away enough independent voters in PA-08 from the “trending R” column to win election in November, then you should start pointing out stuff like this instead of me…trying thinking about that before you hit me up again for a campaign donation).

Before I say another word, I have to put in a plug for this terrific book. Writer Hedrick Smith does a great job of explaining exactly how we have come to our current predicament in this country when it comes to the economy primarily, but also when it comes to the climate crisis, our seemingly permanent political-military-industrial surveillance state, and the urgent need for electoral reform, which kind of hovers over most every other problem (made it just about all the way through…I’ll say something else when I finish). He also provides recommendations on what we can do to turn things around (think more civic involvement on every level for starters). We all should read this.

Turning to the other stuff, somehow I missed this little item from last week; another stellar moment from our wet noodle PA-08 Republican U.S. House Rep…

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick and his Republican House colleagues have voted 37 times to repeal various portions of the Affordable Care Act.

Now, a bill he has sponsored along with a Nevada Republican would maintain several consumer protections and access to health insurance coverage in the highly unlikely event Democrats would join in to repeal the health care measure.

“This bill gives us a practical way to keep the popular parts of the Affordable Care Act while Congress finds a solution to fix the unpopular parts that have many Americans deeply concerned,” Fitzpatrick said Tuesday.

Fitzpatrick, R-8, has teamed with Joe Heck, R-Nev., an osteopathic physician, to write the Ensuring Quality Health Care for All Americans Act of 2013.

Well, bless Mikey’s pointed little head (and as noted from here, “unpopular” in this context is code for “Yeah, well, get rid of this stuff and you’ve basically gutted health care reform”)…

In order to preserve the current system of private health insurance while barring insurance companies from unsavory practices such as denying claims based on pre-existing conditions, every American must buy into the insurance risk pool. Otherwise, sick Americans would only purchase coverage when convenient while forgoing it while they are healthy, creating a vicious cycle that would drive health insurance premiums through the roof and eventually destroy the insurance industry. In turn, hospitals wouldn’t receive compensation for their services, thus bankrupting care providers, too.

H.R. 2165 would also eliminate the various taxes that fund Obamacare, meaning that poor Americans wouldn’t be able to access an expanded Medicaid pool. Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion is expected to provide basic health coverage to over 21 million low-income Americans by 2022.

I don’t know where Justin Kevin Strouse, one of two declared Dem opponents against Fitzpatrick for 2014, comes down on the issue of the Affordable Care Act (might be a good idea for him to defend it – just sayin’), but to learn more about him and help his campaign, click here (and by the way, Mikey also voted for this mess).

And keeping it local (and related to health care), I came across this item also from Mikey’s PR factory…

A year ago, state Rep. Gene DiGirolamo publicly criticized Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposal to cut 20 percent from the budget of human services and turn seven line items into one block grant.

He described the plan as a “disaster” and fought to have a portion of the money restored.

Today, the Republican chair of the House Human Services Committee again opposes the Republican governor. DiGirolamo has come out in favor of a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, the expansion of Medicaid eligibility for the working poor.

“A lot of people might not like Obamacare, but whether you like it or not it’s the law of the land,” said DiGirolamo, who represents Bensalem. “We have to make a decision that’s best for Pennsylvania.”

DiGirolamo is definitely not one of my favorite people, but I think he’s what was once known as a fairly moderate Republican on a lot of issues; he also knows the political calculus of how strong a voting bloc senior citizens are in PA and in this country overall. For whatever reason exactly, he deserves credit for this.

But of course, we have to have the full-on insane right-wing screeching over this story too, apparently…

Jennifer Stefano, state director of Americans for Prosperity, called the Medicaid system “broken,” and said those who receive care through Medicaid “experience worse health outcomes than those who are without coverage at all.”

One-third of Pennsylvania’s doctors will not accept new Medicaid patients, she said, because of the program’s “convoluted, multi-layered regulations and low compensation rates.”

She praised Corbett “for not buying into this failed aspect of the president’s health care law.”

(Typical for the Courier Times not to properly identify AFP with the Koch Brothers, by the way.)

As you might have guessed, Stefano has attacked Medicaid before, and she was just as wrong then as she is now (here – fifth bullet).

Next, did you know that the IRS “scandal” involving former director Douglas Shulman (you know, the ones where the Teahadists were “targeted” when they applied for 501(c)(4) status as “social welfare” organizations that supposedly didn’t engage in political activity) was part of a scheme involving Obama aide Stephanie Cutter to basically ramrod health care into law?

No – living in the world of reality, I don’t expect that you would (or, as Carol Platt Liebau puts it here)…

May 2009 – Cutter moves to White House from Treasury Department
January 2010 – Citizens United is handed down; Democrats are hysterical
March 2010 – IRS begins targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups
April 2010 – Cutter assigned to sell health care reform; if meetings with Shulman didn’t occur before, presumably they did so afterwards.

I’m pretty much speechless as I read that – so I guess Liebau’s none-too-subtle timeline alleges that not only did that Kenyan Muslim Socialist pre-zee-dint seek to target the teabaggers, but he wanted to shove some “big gumint” health care scheme down their throats also (with the willing assistance of Number 44’s army of ACORN volunteers and the New Black Panther Party, I’m sure…I watched a little bit of “The Last Word” last night, and apparently, this is a preview of the new Repug nonsense on attacking the health care law).

And here’s another shaky pillar in what passes for Liebau’s argument…

So whether or not the stated purpose of the meetings was about ObamaCare — unless Shulman’s politics are very different from the lefty leanings of his wife — it isn’t hard to imagine Shulman and Cutter exchanging some congruent views.

That might be true if Shulman shared Cutter’s political worldview, as it were, which is unlikely given that Shulman was an appointee of Former President Nutball, as noted here. Of course, given that there’s no “there” there in Liebau’s charge, you could rightly wonder how much it matters anyway.

And I think what Liebau is arguing is that, somehow, Power violated the Hatch Act that bans government officials from political activity. I don’t buy that; besides, Power truly has nothing on former Bushie Lurita Doan in that department (here), who basically endured humiliation in the court of public opinion for it, and rightly so, but she avoided jail time or any kind of punitive sanction for it.

This is typical for Liebau, though, who, as noted here, also alleged with no proof that the Obama Administration once offered a job to former Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff in exchange for dropping out of that election (and based on this, it looks like Romanoff has declared that he will challenge Repug incumbent Mike Coffman in CO-06 for next year).

However much I may disagree with Liebau, though, she’s got nothing on Fred Barnes when it comes to “catapulting the propaganda,” as noted here…

Faced with such obstacles (my note: the already-mentioned IRS stuff, the AP/James Rosen stuff and BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI!), the president could focus instead on his own domestic agenda—if he had one. He doesn’t. He’s paying the price for a re-election campaign that was based on attacking his opponent, Mitt Romney, and not much else. In the president’s State of the Union address in February, he endorsed a $9 minimum wage and universal prekindergarten for 4-year-olds, but those proposals lack a popular mandate. If he had campaigned for them last year, they might have better prospects now.

In response, this recent Gallup poll tells us 71% want an increase in the minimum wage to $9. And while I can’t find approval numbers on pre-k funding, this tells us that we’re a little past that point anyway, unfortunately.

Continuing with Barnes…

The exclusion of Republicans from a role in crafting ObamaCare has also backfired. By failing to ensure that the GOP had some influence on the health-care law, the president gave them no reason to support its implementation.

This tells us the Republican proposals included in the health care bill (don’t know how many were included when the bill was signed into law – I’d be interested in finding out a comparison of Democratic vs. Republican amendments to see which ones got in and which ones didn’t, but I can’t locate that information at the moment. And of course, Barnes really didn’t even try to locate that either, did he?).

Continuing…

Then, after the November election, Mr. Obama spurned conciliation. He upped the ante, calling for higher spending, a new economic stimulus and an increase in the debt limit without congressional approval. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell laughed out loud when he heard the proposal.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s one of the reasons why Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao is currently the most unpopular U.S. Senator in this country, as noted here.

Oh, and on the subject of “increasing the debt limit without congressional approval,” which would have entailed minting a trillion-dollar debt coin, if you will, by the Treasury, Obama rejected the idea, for the record (yet more Barnes propaganda – a big time Barnes slap-down is here).

Continuing on the topic of Obama Administration “scandals,” it looks like Fix Noise is trying to trump up yet another one here…

The former White House adviser and longtime Obama friend nominated Wednesday as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has a history of controversial comments that could haunt her in confirmation — including likening U.S. foreign policies to those of the Nazis.

In a March 2003 New Republic magazine essay, Samantha Power wrote that American foreign policy needs a “historical reckoning” which would entail “opening the files” and “acknowledging the force of a mantra we have spent the last decade promoting in Guatemala, South Africa, and Yugoslavia.”

She continued: “Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When (German Chancellor Willy) Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto, his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?”

I read through this entire screed, and I can’t find a single instance of claims by Power that invoke the Nazis. Unless of course someone at this joke of a “news” site saw the name Willy Brandt and automatically made the association (and to find out how incorrect an association that is, all you need to do is read this).

So what else is supposedly wrong with Power? Well…

…others say her views on the Middle East spark concerns about her position on Israel. She once suggested the possibility of military intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

As you read that, keep in mind that Fix Noise and their fellow wingnuts spent much of last year pumping up the presidential candidacy of one Willard Mitt Romney. And in the godawful circumstance of a Romney victory last November, he would have reunited many of the truly bad actors of the fetid Bushco years, particularly on foreign policy, where we heard about nothing but military intervention on Iran, which would have been a cataclysmic mistake (here – a more thorough debunking of the claim that Power supported invading Israel can be found from here).

I guess the “Foxies” realized that claiming that Obama supposedly didn’t honor our vets on Memorial Day here wasn’t going to fly (here), so it was time to journey down the rabbit hole over something else (and on the matter of politicians and Memorial Day, I wonder why “Senator Honor and Virtue” gets a complete and total pass here from our corporate media for staging his little Syria visit on the day when we honor those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our nation?).

And as long as we’re on the subject of members of our prior ruling cabal, I give you Michael Hayden, former CIA director (here)…

In the case of the Associated Press report on a Yemen-based bomb plot, the source had apparently penetrated an al Qaeda network and there were hopes that he could continue to be exploited.

In the Fox News report on North Korea’s intention to test a nuclear weapon, James Rosen told us not just that the United States judged that Pyongyang would respond to impending sanctions with a test. He pointedly added that a source in North Korea had told us so.

These kinds of stories get people killed. While at CIA I recounted to a group of news bureau chiefs that, when an agency presence in a denied area had been revealed in the media, two assets had been detained and executed. The CIA site there wrote: “Regret that we cannot address this loss of life with the person who decided to leak our mission to the newspapers.”

I actually think that’s well said. However, the column also contains this…

A quick survey of former Bush administration colleagues confirmed my belief that a proposal to sweep up a trove of AP phone records or James Rosen’s e-mails would have had a half-life of about 30 seconds in that administration.

Really? I’m sure James Risen of the New York Times would disagree – as noted here…

ABC News reported on May 15, 2006, that senior federal law enforcement officials had informed them that the government was tracking the phone numbers of journalists without the journalists’ knowledge as part of an effort to root out the journalists’ confidential sources. . . I was mentioned by name as one of the reporters whose work the government was looking into.

The only reason why the Bush gang didn’t do the same stuff the Obama DOJ is doing now is because the technology wasn’t available to them (and rest assured that I’m not condoing it either way).

As noted here, though, Hayden has received a “do-over” from our corporate media on the issue of warrantless surveillance before (maybe all of his military hardware shone too brightly in the klieg lights and distracted anyone practicing actual journalism, or something).

Also, someone name Alan Gottlieb opined as follows in the Philadelphia Inquirer (here)…

The right of self-defense is the oldest human right, and the British experiment with public disarmament failed as miserably as our own gun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The 10-year Clinton ban on so-called assault weapons was just as ineffective against crime.

As far as I’m concerned, you cannot conclusively make that claim – this tells us the NRA and Wayne LaPierre mischaracterized a study on the 1994 to 2003 assault weapons ban to claim that it was ineffective (shocking for the NRA to wax propagandistic on this, I know)…

To the contrary, it found some encouraging signs, like an average 40 percent drop in the number of assault weapons used in crimes (some cities saw a drop of over 70 percent) and some benefit from the ban on high-capacity magazines.

But mostly, the study was inconclusive. Not enough time had passed for the ban’s effect to be fully felt and there were too many loopholes to get a good read on its effect. For instance, the number of high-capacity magazines in the country actually increased during time of the ban because it was still legal to import magazines made in other countries before the law went into effect. Meanwhile, numerous other variables contributed to the drop in crime during that decade, including better policing and the end of the crack epidemic.

In his testimony, (Cato Institute law professor David) Kopel zeroed in on this passage from the study: ‘We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.’

By the same token, the study didn’t rule out the ban as a contributor to the drop in crime. Just because something can’t be proven does not mean that the opposite is automatically true.

This is part and parcel of the death industry’s efforts to hide the consequences of their relentless propagation of weapons of violence in this country (though, as noted here, there is some rather fragmented evidence that stronger gun laws reduce violent crime, though, again, that needs to be studied by an independent body such as the Centers for Disease Control – the only problem is that Congress, acting with craven and thoroughly corrupted stupidity, has denied federal funds for such an endeavor, as noted here).

And on this subject, the “takeaway” from this Daily Kos post is that 55 percent of those polled think we can pass common-sense gun legislation in this country without interfering with the rights of legitimate sportsmen (even if Gottlieb is likely not one of those included – and not that I think Mr. “We Snookered The Other Side” is playing straight on this issue anyway).

As The Daily Caller has reported, at least five different IRS offices in Cincinnati, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; Laguna Niguel and El Monte, California; improperly demanded extensive information from conservative groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status between 2010 and 2012. The IRS demanded copies of training materials distributed by conservative groups, as well as personal information on college interns and even the contents of a religious group’s prayers.

Horrors! The IRS “demanded” information from the Teahadists who were applying for tax-exempt status having to do with a section of the tax code applying to “social welfare” groups that prohibits political activity, even though these groups most definitely engaged in activities that were political, as noted here (with Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson saying that the problem wasn’t that too much information was asked for, but that information was requested only from conservative organizations, apparently…and sorry, but I checked the links and couldn’t substantiate the “prayer” claim either).

I really wish The Daily Tucker would just stick to doing what it does best (and I guess the pic above portrays that).

Finally, I don’t know how many other people besides me noted the recent passing of Father Andrew Greeley (here); I don’t have much to add, but I thought E.J. Dionne of the WaPo penned a nice remembrance here.

Thursday marks the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. No doubt, the billions spent on the act have improved overall water quality. Yet as someone who regularly rowed on Washington, D.C.’s Potomac River during college, I know that the Clean Water Act and the EPA are still in murky water.

The author then goes on to lament the fact that storm runoff (i.e., trash) ends up in the Potomac, which he encounters while rowing. So, for that reason, he considers the Clean Water Act “40 years of inefficient solutions.”

Seriously.

Now I don’t know how culpable the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (DCWSA) is for this circumstance (that is where the author squarely lays the blame). However, the author also tells us that he’s a member of the Property and Environment Research Center (note the order of “property” and “environment,” by the way) which, as noted here, “(is linked) to a long list of the country’s most powerful right-wing foundations and organizations committed to deregulation of industry and to the privatization of public assets” (David Currie, the author of this piece, keeps harking back to “market-based solutions,” which for our purposes here is wingnut code for letting business do whatever it wants).

However, I think it’s still idiotic to consider the Clean Water Act to be a “failure” focus solely on the ongoing pollutions challenges not addressed by the Clean Water Act (here); Obama Administration EPA head Lisa Jackson, citing the Act’s accomplishments here, said it “has kept tens of billions of pounds of sewage, chemicals and trash out of the nation’s waterways during the past 40 years. The federal law, which includes regulations governing drinking water and requiring improvements in the environmental health of rivers, lakes and seas, has dramatically improved both human health and the environment.”

Also concerning the Act, this tells us that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has encouraged Congress to reauthorize the CWA; I guess Boehner, Cantor, Mikey the Beloved and their pals won’t do it because they consider it to be an unwarranted regulatory intrusion, or something. In addition, the National Clean Water Network tells us here what new assaults the life forms running the U.S. House are planning against the Act and the environment overall (with this Romney advisor telling us he, and by extension, his party’s presidential nominee, wants to “reverse this trend of ownership of public lands,” as if that’s supposedly so awful).

I guess this is par for the Repug course when you consider that the law was originally vetoed here by then-president Richard Nixon because it was supposedly too expensive, which prompted a statesman-like response from Sen. Ed Muskie, asking what the “cost” was for our health and a safe environment.

And while I wish Number 44 would distance himself from his electoral opponent on this issue, this tells us that “stim” funds were committed to cleanup of our waterways, and here, Dem Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, introduced H.R. 6249 – the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act in the House of Representatives, legislation to “establish a Clean Water Trust Fund, which is revenue neutral, does not add to the federal debt, (and raises) approximately $9 billion a year for the Trust Fund.”

However, given this, do you honestly believe “Orange Man” and his pals will budge one inch in favor of doing the right thing?

Also, did you know that Mr. “Binders Full of Women” is supposedly better on LGBT Issues than Obama? The author of this piece says so anyway (sticking with The Daily Tucker)…

While we applaud President Obama for supporting the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — a failed policy that Governor Romney and his running mate Rep. Paul Ryan have said they will not reinstate — and while we give President Obama credit for coming to the Dick Cheney position on marriage equality, the truth is that Obama’s administration has been devastating for average gay people and their families.

Really? Why, just stick a rainbow decal from that Toyota Sienna minivan on my forehead and Color Me Shocked!

How can that be, given that Romney and his running mate, Mr. Puppy-Dog-Eyes-With-The-Shiv, both support the ridiculous Defense of Marriage Act, as noted here (well, Mitt was better on this in 1994, as noted here, opposing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and supporting the Employee Non-Discrimination Act – I guess he “shook that Etch-a-Sketch” and came up with a new answer…and isn’t this interesting concerning DOMA?).

This takes us to a Think Progress post asking Romney six questions on LGBT issues that he should answer (and answering in the affirmative would definitely go against his party’s platform, such as it is). But until Romney does answer them (and holds to that answer without changing his mind for at least five minutes), there’s no reason to take him seriously on this subject.

And as long as we’re discussing the Repug presidential nominee, I think this column asks a very good question (and one that definitely should be discussed in the debates – maybe for the last one I hope), and that is how Willard Mitt feels about torture (he can even call it “enhanced interrogation” if he wants – I have to tell you, though, that I think the answer is here, and it’s not a good one).

Related to that item, I give you this, telling us about some of the “war heads” who would likely comprise a Romney foreign policy team, including PNAC’s Eliot Cohen, “Baghdad” Dan Senor, and Cofer Black of the aptly-named (but no longer – currently “XE”) Blackwater, along with former Bushie John Lehman and someone named Pierre Prosper.

But as far as Romney and foreign policy goes (and tied to his utter debate flameout on Libya), this tells us about more of Willard Mitt’s “do as I say, not as I do” BS.

Further, I give you “Pastor” Gerson of the WaPo, lecturing the Dems (Biden in particular) on “civility” here (a bit behind in the news cycle on this, I’ll admit)…

At the height of a close election, it is worth a reminder that civility is the essential democratic virtue. Civility is not the same thing as niceness. The high stakes of politics can produce intense disagreements. But manners — even cold, formal ones — communicate a modicum of mutual respect and preserve the possibility of cooperation. John Stuart Mill called democracy “government by discussion.” Biden has left our discussion more toxic — and Obama’s task more difficult.

Of course, this was written before the Tuesday debate, it should be noted.

This is the same Michael Gerson, by the way, who once said here that President Obama was “delusional” and the reconciliation process (used by both parties and embraced by that fine, upstanding Roman Catholic Repug VP nominee) was “dirty.” Also, the same Gerson held up “Straight Talk” McCain as a supposed model of civility here, even though McCain once asked “how do we beat the bitch?” in reference to Hillary Clinton (when “Senator Honor and Virtue” thought she would be the ’08 Dem presidential nominee), and said that Chelsea Clinton was “ugly” because “her father was Janet Reno.”

I give you another lesson in wingnut code; when Gerson and his ilk talk about “civility,” what that means is a Democrat is supposed to sit down, shut up, and let a Repug take charge.

Finally, turning to sports, this tells us that Spencer Hawes, who I believe is still with the Sixers (haven’t found evidence to the contrary), has taken to the Twitter thingie to endorse Romney.

Which I would care less about, were it not for the fact that he did it like this:

Hawes made it clear earlier this year that he is not a supporter of noted basketball fan President Obama, or of the president’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. When the Supreme Court handed down its ruling that the healthcare reform legislation is constitutional in June, Hawes tweeted: “Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave. We might as well be in Russia in 1983.”

He went on to refer to the Obama administration as communist in several tweets, and added:

Just drove by a bald eagle who appeared to be crying. Coincidence @BarackObama?

Ha and ha, wingnut.

Oh yes, Hawes is so “established” that they traded for Andrew Bynum and his questionable knees and signed the human punch line that is Kwame Brown (here).

When it comes to playing center for the Sixers, if Hawes is the answer, then the question is too scary to contemplate (just add him to the list of failed centers for that team – Matt Geiger, Jeff Ruland coming off injury, etc.).

In the meantime, tells Hawes to try driving the lane against Dwight Howard the next time he opposes the Lakers.

To begin, here’s former Bushie Doug Feith in the pages of the Murdoch Street Journal yesterday (here)…

In the 16 months since the revolt began (in Syria), the Obama administration has neither promoted humanitarian “safe zones” on Syria’s Turkish border, nor provided arms to the rebels. It has not helped establish a no-fly zone, nor has it supported NATO military strikes against Assad’s forces.

In response, I would tend to side with foreign policy expert Joshua Landis, who said here that Obama was “smart” to stay out of Syria for the following reason…

“America is not good at nation-building in the Arab World. We’ve seen this in Iraq. We’ve seen this in Afghanistan. Syria is not an easier country. It has the same divisions.”

Uh, yep. And besides, as noted here, Obama promised to provide “non-lethal” aid to the rebels and stepped up sanctions against both Iran and Syria here (not a panacea I know, but something).

For Obama, military engagement with Syria may not be feasible from either a policy and political perspective. Syria, unlike Libya, has greater defense capabilities, and administration officials doubt a bombing campaign could be accomplished quickly and relatively bloodlessly. Engaging U.S. forces in Syria would also run counter to Obama’s foreign policy campaign narrative, which is built on being the president who ends wars, with the Iraq conflict coming to a close under his watch and the Afghanistan campaign winding down.

U.S. President George W. Bush had a falling out with the Assad regime over Iraq and vigorously contested its domination of Lebanon, but his hardball tactics weren’t really designed to undermine its grip on power. American officials denounced the lack of democracy in Syria and held high profile meetings with secular opposition leaders, but gave the cold shoulder to the Muslim Brotherhood. Washington wanted Syrian cooperation in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza, and for that it needed a stable government capable of honoring its commitments.

Though outraged by the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri (in Western capitals, arguably the most personally well-liked Mideast leader of his day), European governments steadily reconciled with Damascus as its allies subsequently battled for supremacy over Lebanon’s pro-Western March 14 coalition. When EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana visited Assad in March 2007, the subject of reform and human rights in Syria didn’t even come up.[3]

I don’t know if it would have mattered if Former Commander Codpiece had bothered to broker the subject with Assad, but there’s no percentage at all in ignoring the subject altogether.

Continuing with Feith, I give you the following…

By refusing to act on Syria, the president is missing an opportunity to advance U.S. security interests in the Middle East, while benefiting Iran, the principal sponsor of the Assad regime. And by suggesting that America lacks international legal authority to act, he is undermining U.S. sovereignty. Presidents have traditionally striven to bolster America’s sovereignty and freedom of action, but Mr. Obama evidently sides with the global legalists who see national sovereignty as a problem to be overcome, not a principle to be cherished.

Oh brother…

I’ll tell you what – when it comes to overseas matters such as this, particularly in the Middle East, I inevitably turn to Juan Cole, who provides more typically cogent analysis here as to why we should stay out of arming the Syrian rebels.

And let’s not forget Feith’s awful track record on Middle East foreign policy management overall, noted in horrendous detail by yours truly here (as well as the ludicrous charge that Obama is “anti-Israel” here).

In 2010, Florida Democrats mercilessly attacked then-candidate Rick Scott over his record at Columbia/HCA, a company Scott founded that eventually became the largest private, for-profit health care company in the U.S. Democratic candidate Alex Sink spent much of the campaign alleging impropriety and scandal because Columbia/HCA paid $1.7 billion in fines to the U.S. government, never mind that Gov. Scott was never charged or even questioned in the matter.

For the record, it should be pointed out that Lex Luthor Scott was investigated for the following, as noted here…

…federal investigators found that Scott took part in business practices at Columbia/HCA that were later found to be illegal — specifically, that Scott and other executives offered financial incentives to doctors in exchange for patient referrals, in violation of federal law, according to lawsuits the Justice Department filed against the company in 2001.

The doctor payments were among 10 different kinds of fraud identified by the Justice Department in its 10-year probe of the company, records show. Three years after Scott left Columbia/HCA, the company admitted wrongdoing, pleading guilty to 14 felonies — most committed during Scott’s tenure — in addition to paying two sets of fines totaling $1.7 billion…

Whether or not Scott was aware of his company’s questionable conduct, the breadth of the problems raises questions about Scott’s leadership, management experts say.

Oh, and by the way, this isn’t technically illegal either (not as far as we know), but it still stinks to high heaven (take a bow, all you voters in the Mickey Mouse state who elected this fraud over Alex Sink two years ago).

Let’s say you are president in a time of a sustained economic slowdown. You initiated a series of big policies that you thought were going to turn the economy around, but they didn’t work — either because they were insufficient or ineffective. How do you run for re-election under these circumstances?

Do you spend the entire campaign saying that things would have been even worse if you hadn’t acted the way you did? No. That would be pathetic.

OK, to begin with, this tells us that the stimulus was successful (should be conventional wisdom by now…oh well), as was the bailout of the auto industry (sorry, BoBo).

And on the subject of “things would have been even worse” had Obama not won election, I think we should consider the following from this March 2008 article in Salon…

On domestic policy, (Repug presidential candidate John) McCain’s nostrums for the bad economy are job training and “tax cuts.” As Paul Krugman once pointed out, “tax cuts” were Bush’s response to each and every economic problem that arose, however unrealistic they were. Half of all the benefits of Bush’s 2003 tax cut went to millionaires, and the sad impact on ordinary Americans of consequent lack of services and the diversion of wealth to the wealthy, has now become amply apparent. The more economically literate Republicans have caught on to Bush’s “tax cut” shell game. Ironically, John McCain used to be one of them, declining to sign on to some of Bush’s tax cuts. No more.

By “tax cuts,” Republicans such as McCain mean lowering specific federal taxes on income and capital gains. This step would harm federal income, which will fall anyway if there is an extended recession, and would mainly benefit Americans in the top income brackets. A federal government with less income will be less able to pay for the services and job training ordinary workers and middle-class people need, especially in bad times. Moreover, in a recession, you want the government to spend more money, not less, which cannot be accomplished by reducing its income. McCain, like Bush, seems firmly stuck in 1929.

This isn’t surprising I suppose, when you consider that John W. McBush said repeatedly that he didn’t know much about the economy, or words to that sorry effect, as noted here. Also, on the subject of Obama’s alleged “socialism” (please – some interesting food for thought on that here), I should point out that McBush’s VP nominee, Just Plain Folks Sarah Palin Dontcha Know, set up something in Alaska, with everyone in the state getting about $3 grand each from oil company fees, that looks more like socialism than anything concocted by Number 44, as noted here.

Oh, and did you know that BoBo once said that President Obama wouldn’t fit in at an Applebee’s salad bar, or something (particularly funny since Applebee’s doesn’t have salad bars, as noted here), and told our chief executive to “Go visit a factory for once” a matter of days after he had already done so (here)?

But of course, we can’t expect BoBo to admit that he, along with Mr. “Chunky Reese Witherspoon” himself, are nothing but conservative quota hires for The Old Grey Lady, installed to merely propagate right-wing talking points as opposed to undergoing the frequently arduous work of crafting enlightening commentary whose stated purpose is to educate and inform, providing the vital information upon which we citizens can make informed decisions.